Dancing With Dead Men

by James Reasoner

  "I won't ask that you don't take the job, Mr. Handley," she had said. "I wouldn't interfere with any man's employment. But I will ask that you be as quiet as possible when you come in at night, to avoid disturbing any of the other residents."

  "Of course," Logan had promised.

  He had lived up to that, being careful not to thump his cane too loudly on the floor when he was moving around. He was in the habit, too, of going into the parlor to blow out the lamp Vickie left burning for him. That way she didn't have to worry about it.

  Tonight when he went into the parlor to do that, his tiredness caught up to him and he sank down in one of the armchairs, figuring that he would sit there for a few minutes and catch his breath before he blew out the lamp and went upstairs.

  Without thinking about what he was doing, he reached across his body with his right hand and began to massage his aching left shoulder. He rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes.

  He had been sitting there like that for several minutes when he suddenly felt a light touch from behind him. Vickie Eastland said, "Let me do that for you."

  Logan turned his head and looked back in surprise. She stood behind the chair. Her hair was loose for a change, and she wore a dressing gown tightly belted around the waist and closed up to her throat. Still, this was certainly the most informal he had seen her since he had been living in her house.

  "I'd like that," he told her. He turned his head around to the front and closed his eyes again as her fingers began to dig into his shoulder with surprising firmness. At the same time, her touch had a soothing gentleness about it. The combination worked its way into his sore, tight muscles and made them loosen in relief.

  After a moment Logan wanted to groan in pleasure, but instead he kept his eyes closed and said, "You do that . . . very well."

  "I used to rub my husband's shoulders like this," Vickie said. Then, as if she just realized what she had said, she drew in a sharp breath.

  Logan didn't know what to say. He still had no idea what had caused the two of them of them to divorce, and he wasn't going to pry into something that was none of his business.

  Instead he said awkwardly, "I'm sure he found it quite enjoyable."

  Vickie took her hands away, much to Logan's regret. She said, "I didn't mean anything by that comment, Mr. Handley. I certainly did not mean to . . . to compare you to anyone else, including my former husband."

  "I know that, Mrs. Eastland. You're just kind-hearted. You can't stand to see anyone suffering . . . even a man."

  He wasn't sure what prompted him to say that. The words came out harsher than he intended. Harsh enough to make Vickie take a step back. When he looked around at her, her face was set in hard lines.

  "I'll say good night now," she said coldly. "Please be as quiet as possible when you're going upstairs."

  "Of course," Logan said. He wished the moment of friendliness between them hadn't gotten shattered so easily. Obviously, whatever feelings she had been experiencing were fragile ones. He hadn't meant to hurt her.

  He sat there a few more minutes then blew out the lamp and went upstairs, being careful not to thump his cane on the stairs.

  9.

  The brief thaw on Vickie's part was only temporary; Logan's thoughtless words had seen to that. She wasn't unfriendly, necessarily, but over the next few weeks she was as cool as ever, mirroring the weather advancing through the autumn toward winter.

  Logan spent very little money. He took his lunches at a hash house not far from the barber shop, where he could get a decent meal for ten cents. Dewey Dumont treated him to an occasional beer when he wasn't working. The two dollars a week he paid to Vickie for room and board represented his biggest expense.

  Because of that, the wages he earned from Doc and Dewey began to add up, and it occurred to Logan that the smart thing to do would be to put the money in the bank, instead of stashing it in the wardrobe in his room at the boarding house, as he had been doing.

  On a cool, blustery day in November, he decided to skip lunch and use the time to pay a visit to the bank instead. He took the money he had saved with him, carrying the coins in a leather pouch he stuck in his coat's inner pocket. They made a nice, satisfying lump.

  The bank was down the hill from the bathhouses, an appropriately solid-looking red brick edifice. When Logan went inside at midday, he found himself in the usual hushed atmosphere of a financial institution. It was odd, he thought, how banks and churches had some of the same sort of feel about them, an aura that made people lower their voices and walk softly. That was because some people worshipped money, he supposed. He had been guilty of that himself, at least to a certain extent.

  During the years he had spent as a well-paid gunman, he'd had bank accounts in both Denver and San Francisco. His medical expenses had cleaned them out. Today was the first time he had set foot in a bank for months.

  Several desks were arranged in two rows behind a low, gated railing to his left. Stuffy-looking men in suits sat at those desks. Behind them was a door that probably led to the bank president's private office. A line of tellers' cages was in front of Logan, with a high counter to the right where customers could make out deposit or withdrawal forms and write in their bank books. It was empty at the moment. Two of the tellers had customers, but the third man wasn't busy, and as Logan approached, he said, "May I help you, sir?"

  Logan stepped up to the cage, took the pouch from his pocket, and set it on the counter.

  "I'd like to open an account and deposit this, please."

  "Of course, sir." The teller picked up a pencil and a piece of paper to take down Logan's particulars.

  Before he could write anything, he glanced over Logan's shoulders, and the way the teller's eyes suddenly got wide and scared told Logan something was wrong. He looked behind him and saw five men barging into the bank. Each man wore a duster, a pulled-down hat, and a bandanna tied over the lower half of his face. They all brandished guns.

  Instantly, Logan's brain flashed back to the train robbery and his encounter with Frank and Jesse James. His first thought was that the James boys had come to Hot Springs to hold up the bank.

  But then the man in the lead yelled through his mask, "Nobody move! Everybody stick your hands in the air or we'll start shootin'!"

  The robber's voice had a ragged, nervous quality that was a far cry from the cool, measured tones of Jesse James. These men weren't veteran desperadoes like the James-Younger gang. They were all jittery as they spread out across the lobby and menaced the customers and bank employees with their revolvers.

  Amateurs, Logan thought scornfully. They were scared. It was entirely possible this was the first bank they had ever held up.

  But a nervous man with a gun was a dangerous thing. Logan turned slowly away from the counter and held up both hands in plain sight. The left one trembled from the effort it took to use his weakened arm.

  "That's right," the leader of the outlaws said, his words still slightly muffled by the bandanna. "Just do like we say, or we'll kill everybody in here."

  Outlandish threats like that were another sign of inexperience. Gunshots would draw a lot of attention. The outlaws wouldn't want that.

  In a way, this hold-up probably was Jesse James's fault, Logan thought. Jesse's fame had spread across the whole country and inspired a lot of would-be desperadoes. Jesse had made daring daylight robberies like this glamorous. Logan had run into plenty of young gunmen who wanted nothing more than to be famous, even if it cost them their lives doing it.

  Logan and the other two customers were herded at gunpoint over to the side counter, where one robber covered them while two others got the tellers to come out of their cages and join the customers. Meanwhile one of the other outlaws covered the clerks while the leader went to the door of the bank president's office and banged on it with his fist.

  "Come on outta there!" the leader shouted. "We'll start shootin' folks if you don't!"

  The door opened tentatively.
The boss outlaw reached in with his free hand, grabbed the bank president by the front of his vest and shirt, and hauled him out. A hard shove sent the man sprawling on top of one of the desks. That upset an inkwell and caused a black pool of ink to spread over the blotter.

  "You're gonna open up the vault now," the outlaw ordered. "Get to it."

  The bank president summoned up a little bit of courage and said, "If you kill me, you'll never get the vault open."

  "Oh, I won't kill you," the outlaw said, and Logan could almost see the sneer on his face through the bandanna. "I'll just blow one of your knees apart." He eared back the hammer on his gun and pointed it at the bank president's leg. "You want that, mister? You want pain and misery for the rest of your life?"

  Those words kindled a fire of anger inside Logan. He knew what it was like to be crippled, although his condition wasn't the result of a gunshot wound, and he didn't like to hear anyone else being threatened with that. But with an outlaw's gun pointing at him like it was, he couldn't really do anything about it.

  Be honest, he told himself. There was nothing he could do anyway, even if he wasn't covered.

  The bank president's normally beefy face was pale with fear now. He said hurriedly, "All right, all right. Don't shoot. I'll open the vault."

  "Figured you would," the boss outlaw said. His voice was full of contempt.

  The bank president shuffled toward an open door between the desks and the tellers' cages. Beyond it, the vault door was visible. While that was going on, two of the outlaws carrying canvas bags moved behind the cages to empty the money from the tellers' drawers. Logan couldn't help but wince a little as he saw one of the men reach for the pouch of coins he had laid on the counter a few minutes earlier. All the money he had saved was about to disappear into one of those bags of loot.

  That was when the bank's front door opened again. The man who walked inside was young, with an open, friendly, unsuspecting face. He wore a badge pinned to the lapel of his coat. He stopped short a couple of steps inside the lobby, looked around at the outlaws regarding him with shocked, frozen stares, and then fumbled at the butt of the pistol holstered on his hip.

  Another duster-clad outlaw, but this one without a mask over his face, rushed into the bank behind the lawman and shouted, "Look out, boys! A deputy!"

  Logan knew instantly what had happened. The gang had left one man outside to hold their horses and keep a lookout for anybody or anything that might interrupt the robbery. But the sixth man had fallen down on the job, probably gotten overconfident, and somehow had let a deputy walk right past him into the bank.

  The young lawman cleared leather, but before he could bring his gun to bear on any of the bank robbers, the lookout shoved the muzzle of a long-barreled Remington against his back and pulled the trigger. The .44 caliber ball ripped through the deputy's body and exploded out the front of his chest in a spray of blood and torn flesh. The shot's impact pitched the young man forward on his face, more than likely dead by the time he hit the floor.

  That lethal commotion distracted the rest of the robbers, and the bank president found some gumption again. He lunged at the boss outlaw, grabbed his gun hand, and tried to wrestle the revolver away from him. The gun boomed and the bank president staggered back as he clutched at his midsection.

  "Those shots'll bring the law down on us!" one of the men who'd been emptying the tellers' cages cried. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

  They started to rush past the customers, but then one of the duster-clad desperadoes paused and reached out with his left arm to grab Logan.

  "They won't shoot at us if we got a cripple for a shield!" the man shouted to his companions.

  Logan wasn't so sure about that. He didn't want to catch a stray bullet. But even if the outlaw was right, Logan's instincts reacted instantly to being grabbed like that. As the robber wrapped his arm around his neck, Logan thrust his cane backward between the man's legs and twisted.

  That threw the robber off-balance and made him fall forward against Logan's back. Still clutching the cane, Logan drove the elbow of his good arm into the man's stomach. That broke the outlaw's grip. Logan stumbled forward a step and turned around.

  Gasping for breath from the blow to his belly, the man tried to bring his gun up for a shot at Logan. As the barrel came level with him, Logan didn't stop to think about what he was doing. He flung out his left arm. His wrist hit the inside of the outlaw's wrist and knocked the gun aside just as the man pulled the trigger. The revolver roared and spouted flame, but the bullet smacked harmlessly into the counter at the tellers' cages.

  Logan swung the cane with his other hand and cracked the hardwood shaft against the side of the outlaw's head. The blow made the man's eyes roll up in their sockets. The gun slipped from his fingers and thudded to the floor. His knees folded up and dropped him. He was out cold.

  "Look out, mister!" one of the other customers yelled.

  Logan jerked his head around and saw that the rest of the gang had paused in their headlong flight toward the door. Their guns came up, and Logan found himself staring down the weapons' barrels at sudden, smashing death.

  10.

  The only thing Logan could do was drop to the floor as the outlaws opened fire on him. Gun-thunder filled the bank's lobby and echoed back deafeningly from the walls.

  The first volley passed several feet over Logan's recumbent form and smashed into the wall. The customers and the tellers who had been prodded into the corner had already started to scatter and dive for cover. Logan hoped no one was hit, but he didn't have time to worry much about it.

  He reached out with his right hand and scooped up the gun that the unconscious outlaw had dropped.

  Although Logan had always been left-handed – his folks hadn't tried to force him out of it, as many parents did with their left-handed youngsters – he had fired a gun with his right hand plenty of times before. He wasn't a two-gun man like some pistoleers, but he had practiced the border shift. Cocking the hammer and squeezing the trigger didn't seem too unnatural as he angled the barrel up from the floor.

  His first shot hit one of the outlaws in the hip and knocked him into the man beside him. Logan fired another round that left a bloody line on the cheek of another man.

  Another gun started to bark. One of the customers had pulled a pocket pistol from under his coat and now joined the fray. He sprayed several slugs around the outlaws.

  Facing that much opposition, and with time running out on them, the robbers' nerve broke. They turned and bolted out the door, even the man Logan had wounded, although he was staggering as his leg tried to fold up under him. The five men disappeared.

  But a heartbeat later more shots roared right outside the bank. The building's front windows shattered. A shotgun boomed.

  "Everybody get down and stay down!" Logan shouted at the men in the bank. The ones who weren't already on the floor hit it in a hurry.

  A few more bullets whistled through the lobby and struck the walls as the gun battle continued outside. Then an abrupt silence fell. It was broken after a few seconds by an agonized moan, then some raspy, bitter cursing that faded away to nothing.

  With a heavy step, a burly man appeared in the doorway and swung a double-barreled Greener from right to left so that he covered the whole lobby.

  "Any more of 'em in here?" he called.

  Logan placed the revolver he had used on the floor and slid it away from him. Then he held up his empty hand and said, "There's one over here, Sheriff, but he's unconscious."

  He had spotted a badge on the newcomer's coat.

  The lawman hurried over and pointed the scattergun at the unconscious outlaw. "What happened to him?"

  The customer who had taken out a pistol and started shooting pointed a finger at Logan and said, "That fella there walloped him with a cane."

  Logan struggled to get up. One of the tellers came over to help him, taking his good arm to support him.

  The sheriff or marshal or whatever he was
looked around and asked, "Anybody else hurt in here?"

  "Mr. Skelling," another teller said as he knelt beside the fallen bank president. "He was shot."

  "And poor Randy's dead, from the looks of it," the lawman said as he frowned down at the deputy who'd been shot in the back. He sighed. "I reckon those idiots in the dusters tried to hold up the bank?"

  "They would have, if not for Deputy Porter and this gentleman," said the teller who was bracing Logan up. "He's a real hero, Marshal Radcliffe."

  Logan didn't want anybody calling him a hero. Anyone who knew some of the things he had done in the past would never think that of him.

  Right now, though, he didn't really care. He was shaky and wanted to sit down.

  "If somebody could . . . get me a chair," he said.

  One of the men did that, bringing a desk chair from behind the railing, and Logan sank gratefully into it.

  A couple more deputies came into the bank. One of them shook his head at the sight of his murdered comrade and asked, "What do we do about all those bodies out on the street, Marshal?"

  Radcliffe, a red-faced man with a goatee, snapped, "Send for the damn undertaker, blast it! And fetch a doctor for Mr. Skelling, too, while you're at it." He turned back to the men who had been in the bank when the would-be robbers burst in and went on, "Now somebody tell me what the devil happened in here."

  Several of them tried to tell it at once. Radcliffe shouted them down and started asking questions. Logan didn't pay much attention to any of the conversation. He sat with his hands clasped between his knees and his head down as he tried to catch his breath.

  Finally the marshal asked him, "What's your name, mister?"

  Logan had been dreading that question. He wished he could have gotten out of there before Radcliffe asked it. If anyone in Hot Springs was likely to recognize his name, it would be a lawman. But he didn't see how he could refuse to answer or even lie. He had given his name to too many people in town for that.

  "It's Logan Handley," he said quietly.